From the Editor - September 6, 2022 Issue

September 5, 2022

9:30 PM

Western Canada's art magazine since 2002

Portia Priegert

From the Editor

Challenging social constructs – things like male privilege and the class system – is something art can do exceptionally well.

Creativity requires malleable mental processing and often comes with an ability to see the world not only as it is, but also as it could be.

Still, the art world can be insular and exclusive. We see that, for instance, when people from different cultural backgrounds are relegated to second-class status by galleries and other art institutions, a situation that, blessedly, has seen progress in recent years.

But as Edmonton arts writer Agnieszka Matjeko writes in this issue, another form of prejudice, ageism, is receiving little attention. In Art and Ageism, she writes that ageism is remarkably common, so much so that we are often unaware of it. “Each day brings us closer to old age,” she writes. “Will our later lives be filled with patronizing remarks so pervasive that – like sexism in earlier times – they are almost invisible?” Agnieszka’s interviews with three remarkable artists – Leslie Hossack, Sharon Rose Kootenay and Lynn Christine Kelly – are a clarion call to challenge our acquiescence to ageism.

In this vein, I also encourage you to read another article in this issue – Sandee Moore’s review of Conceptions of White, an important exhibition at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina that challenges another pervasive assumption – the normalization of whiteness. As Moore writes, the show reveals the construction of white as a neutral default to be “an insubstantial phantasm that is not so much dismantled as vaporized.”

Other stories in this issue also ask us to open ourselves in compassionate ways to other realities:

Paul Gessell’s look at the digital art of Indigenous musician and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, now in Ottawa as part of a Canadian tour.
Moni Brar’s story, Revolutionary Art, about art collectives that are responding to harsh political and social realities in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Helena Wadsley’s review of a Yukon show by Halifax-based artist Carrie Allison, who offers gentle reflections on the beading process.
Katherine Ylitalo’s thoughtful response to resoundingly original work by Robin Arseneault at the Esker Foundation in Calgary.

Looking ahead, I am hoping to interview Tahltan artist Peter Morin this week about his touching tribute to his mother, who nurtured him as an artist but is now deep into her Alzheimer’s journey. We are also working on stories about a new group exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Movement: Expressive Bodies in Art, and solo shows elsewhere by Eduardo Aquino, Amitai Ben David and Nathan Eugene Carson.

Until next time,